SkyCode Horoscopes for October 1-October 6, 2018

Horoscopes to unlock the stars, not to be locked down by them.

“Making Love”

“If you come home a f*ggot, don’t come home,” my Dad said as the family sat in our living room watching the 1982 movie “Making Love” on cable television sometime that year. Dad said it so cavalierly that I knew he wasn’t joking. I wasn’t sure if he were talking to me or my older brother. Or if it was just a general word of caution. The film’s about a young doctor, married to a woman, coming to terms with his homosexuality after a love affair with a man. Neither my brother nor I had ever expressed an interest in boys or men. (Though there was that time my father badgered my brother for days about getting an earring in his ear. Fortunately, Dad couldn’t remember if it was the left or right ear that suggested you were gay.) So, I didn’t exactly take offense or have serious alarm about my sexuality. What shook me was that there could be ANY condition when neither of us would be welcomed home. Yet, my father had made his feelings plain and my mother didn’t counter him. In fact, she seemed equally disgusted by how two men kissed on the screen.

As Venus, a planet named for the Roman goddess of love, goes retrograde on Saturday, I find myself thinking about that moment and movie. Venus retrogrades often speak more about how we experience a loss of love or affinity and that will likely be a salient issue soon. Fittingly, “Making Love” premiered two days after Venus went direct on February 12, 1982.

A Failing Consensus

My colleague and friend Nick Dagan Best has talked about Venus in two interesting ways based on her retrograde cycle. He’s spoken about her as a consensus builder here and a way of tracking cycles of injustice, particularly with Black Americans here.

But consensus and what counts as justice can’t be cordoned off as issues for only one group. Likewise, we can experience any of these issues on an individual level, too. Like the moment in my family’s household when “Making Love” didn’t generate any love from my own folks. We must re-examine certain areas of our lives and what we take for granted at any retrograde cycle. What we’ve taken for granted has likely veered from its original intent and needs re-evaluation and reconstruction.

For instance, we might come to focus more on what divides us than what keeps us together during this Venus retrograde. I can see now where my father’s homophobia blinded him. He completely missed the real point of the film. My whole family did. Instead, I spent the next 10 years as a homophobe myself. Perhaps more fearful that if I were a homosexual I could never go home rather than appreciating love different from my own. One unfortunate by-product of Venus is that when she creates an “us,” she also invariably creates a “them.”

Beyond “Us” and “Them”

One fast and inappropriate way we create a “them” according to neuroscientist Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, is to make “those” people less than human and repugnant. Our feelings of disgust make it easy to see others as less than human. This then makes it easier to isolate others as unworthy of our respect and basic human dignity. That doesn’t mean we must sympathize with their point of view. Or look at their positive sides, like the bevy of articles in the New York Times featuring the humanity and even charm of White “supremacists.” You need only disagree, even adamantly, without transmogrifying your challenger into something less than you or alien. You steer away from propaganda and focus more on principles and peoplehood.

That’s usually the hard part. According to Sapolsky, at this point in our collective evolution, our brains really don’t know the difference between symbolic descriptions of people that repulse us and actual things that make us sick. That’s why we must be careful with how we make others into “those” people and ourselves into more than what we are.

Finding Home

During these divisive times, remember that we are all souls looking for a place to call home. Not everyone needs to be welcomed into your home, whether that’s your actual home or your heart. But be careful about speculating whether “those” folks deserve any home at all. “Us” or “Them” doesn’t matter much if you’re all in one neighborhood, building, or apartment. Real consensus building must begin with how we can come together with respect. Venus’ retrograde seems to compress the springs of an alarm clock of consciousness in each of us. Let’s work to wake up over the next 40 days of her retrograde. Making love can also make hate as a by-product. But we don’t have to choose the by-product. That’s the part that we can trash, not the people themselves.

How to read and use these affirmations

You could choose to read these only for “your sign.” Perhaps that might be your Sun, Moon, or ascendant sign, if you’re familiar with those terms and your chart. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, though.

I would skim through them all and see which affirmation affirms your life this week:

Pay careful attention to the affirmation(s) that you resist. You probably need to meditate on and say those aloud often.

These affirmations are written for this week, but many of them might speak to you for longer, even a lifetime.

You might not know at the top of the week what you need to affirm. But you might have a sense from the previous week, from a dream or something that happens right on Monday morning. You can also visit this page later in the week to see what resonates. You might also discover I write more for another planet or sign in your chart. I talk more about this here.

My desire is to prompt you to read more for your whole chart, not just what you know or understand your birth chart to be. It’s also possible that none of what I write here speaks to you, and that’s okay. The goal is to open and to explore. That’s the only way we ever truly know anything.

The Signs of Saturn

Saturn

Planets or Ascendant in Capricorn and/or Aquarius

Capricorn (Cardinal, Earth sign)

Affirmation:

I contemplate that life is figuring me out rather than only believing that I’m figuring life out.

Aquarius (Fixed, Air sign)

Affirmation:

Sometimes I must yield to a master to become a master myself.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.

The Signs of Jupiter

Jupiter

Planets or Ascendant in Sagittarius and/or Pisces

Sagittarius (Mutable, Fire sign)

Affirmation:

I take being bewildered as an opportunity also to be wild and free as I truly am.

Pisces (Mutable, Water sign)

Affirmation:

I remember that love’s conqueror is he or she whom love conquers.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.

The Signs of Mars

Mars

Planets or Ascendant in Aries and/or Scorpio

Aries (Cardinal, Fire sign)

Affirmation:

I experience moments of being overwhelmed with curiosity and courage.

Scorpio (Fixed, Water sign)

Affirmation:

I allow the hurricane of my desires to be without fearing they will carry “me” away since I am also at its center.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.

The Sign of the Sun

The Sun

Planets or Ascendant in Leo

Leo (Fixed, Fire sign)

Affirmation:

I only need to make an annoyance vanish, not be vanquished.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.

The Signs of Venus

Venus

Planets or Ascendant in Taurus and/or Libra

Taurus (Fixed, Earth sign)

Affirmation:

I allow what’s superficial to blow away like the leaves of fall.

Libra (Cardinal, Air sign)

Affirmation:

I pick up only what I need and leave what’s been scattered by gusts of change to fly to new places.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.

The Signs of Mercury

Mercury

Planets or Ascendant in Gemini and/or Virgo

Gemini (Mutable, Air sign)

Affirmation:

I am mindful that what I strive to catch can also trap me.

Virgo (Mutable, Earth sign)

Affirmation:

I trust what I’m seeking is also looking for me.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.

The Sign of the Moon

The Moon

Planets or Ascendant in Cancer

Cancer (Cardinal, Water sign)

Affirmation:

I heed wisdom when I find it, even when I dislike the source.

Don’t know what planets or points you have where in your chart? Learn what to do about it here.